Debate #1: Wonky enough for ya? Romney helped himself (i.e. won). Tough night to be a contrarian. My only non-obvious thoughts:
1) Obama did well enough–always seeming smart and sensible, if ineffective–that it oddly made him easier to vote against. We can fire him while assuring ourselves he played a good match, there were two credible candidates, etc. He won’t be humiliated. And he can run again.
2) All the networks I saw–including NBC–more or less openly proclaimed Romney the winner. Was it Mark Halperin who said the MSM was itching for a narrative change? He seems to have been right. One possibility: the press will so enthusiastically declare Romney the winner that the public will react against being told what to think and Romney’s debate victory will have less of an effect on the polls than it might have had. This is an anti-MSM variation of the Rushfield Backlash theory, which holds that any hype is outweighed by the backlash it produces. (Indeed, Rushfield himself has tweeted:” this will be the backlash era’s greatest test – if the perceived winner ends up losing support.” That’s a tough assignment–it’s hard to believe that Romney will actually be hurt because he won.)
3) They’ll never get rid of Stuart Stevens now.
4) Obama lost even on issues where he was right–e.g. how offering Medicare as a “choice” doesn’t work if there is a death spiral of adverse selection, something that is difficult to explain clearly.
5) Immigration didn’t come up–and it wouldn’t have been hard for them to bring it up if they’d wanted to, even though the focus of the debate was the economy. (“Our economy needs the talents of these DREAMERs,” etc.). Did both candidates realize that, much as they’d love to Hispander by dangling the prospect of various amnesties, that wouldn’t play well on the large stage of a national debate–e.g. it would cost them non-Latino votes in Ohio?
6) GOP downballot prospects now improve? Discuss …
7) Obama came close to proving my widely unshared view that people are boring but juicy ideas are interesting. All those “woman I met” and “man I met” Real People anecdotes blurred into an incoherent jumble, while Romney offered crisp appealing abstractions. …
P.S.: Complete L.A. Times live clustertweet (in which I particpated) is here. … Tom Hayden, among others, offered a cold, clear-eyed analysis. Nobody seems to have thought Obama did well. …